


lifeblood

by JadeClover



Series: star-hewn colossi [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Magic, Metaphors, Quintessence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 00:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16464830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeClover/pseuds/JadeClover
Summary: Quintessence binds them and quintessence built them. An emperor, a high priestess, and that which flows at the heart of their empire.





	lifeblood

**Author's Note:**

> Is this an excuse to indulge my love of metaphors? Yes. Has this been hiding in the depths of my WIP folder for over a year, originally intended for last year's [Haggar Week](https://haggarweek.tumblr.com/)? Yes.
> 
> Was this written solely as a way for me to express my utter adoration for Haggar and this aspect of her character? _Yes._
> 
> This could work for Day 2 (Relationships), but it fits much better under Day 3 (Life Giver). I tried something new with the formatting for this one and it turned out to be really fun. 
> 
> Warning for descriptions of blood and needles in a medical context in scene viii (8).

**i.**

  
The halls and chambers of his ship dwell in an odd kind of twilight, not dark enough to inhibit, not bright enough to burn.  
  
_Crepuscular_ —that is the word for the Galra of old who woke and slept and hunted to a cycle of dusks and dawns, who now live on in these younger, bolder heirs of time and space. Millennia and light-years shaped them into the conquerors they are, the small prey of the old forests forgotten, but nevertheless, so much remains unchanged. Like nostalgia, like specters from beyond the pyre, here lies evidence of a universal fact: His kind are no longer bound to such a cyclic routine, yet the half-light of this ship is still what best suits the Galran eye.  
  
( _Thousands of decaphoebs of evolution, condensed neatly into a standardized lighting system._ )  
  
But deeper in the ship, where the druids dwell—it is darker there. He never received a clear answer as to _why_ —( _other than, "It is what suits me best"_ )—but...  
  
He will not deny—it lends an _atmosphere._  
  
( _It conjures ghosts and then lays them to rest. Daibazaal had no halls like these, but memories of his ancient homeland still lurk in every shadow regardless. Fitting, if he thinks on it, which he does not._ )  
  
In most places, in particular the long, high halls used for storage, the only light comes from containers of quintessence itself—

 

* * *

   
  
**ii.**

  
( _She did not invent it._  
  
_She did not invent magic or the particular brand of quintessence she refined into her power_ (his power), _but she may as well have._  
  
_In her wake_ (their wake) _none survive but her and hers to practice the methods she did not, in their entirety, create—but in the end saw fit to refine and ruthlessly perfect. She took what the universe had to offer and made it hers_ (made it his).  
  
_When she comes to him, time and again, seeking, telling him "This is what I can do," he only ever has one reply:_  
  
"Do it.")

 

* * *

   
  
**iii.**

  
—the quintessence, glowing captive within its containers, lining the walls left and right, up and down. She keeps a digital record of every sample, he knows, each jar labeled with cryptic, shorthand codes.  
  
( _Life itself reduced to numbers. Sometimes he wonders what each one_ means, _where the line falls between the mathematical and the magical._ )  
  
These deserted chambers ring with an odd kind of quiet, the muted stillness of a darkness lit only by the raw remnants of things that once lived, or things that will one day, by her power, live again. She told him once that a kind of sound beneath sound hums in the air, the resonance of the quintessence with itself and its kind.  
  
He cannot hear it, but not once did that stop him from listening.  
  
The hour is late. He passes not a single of her druids as he goes when normally each turn of a corner would yield several—another oddity of the night cycle.  
  
He reaches an intersection—

 

* * *

   
  
**iv.**

  
( _She rips into the heart of one of his robotic sentries, scattering fragments of wires and circuitry. With a cursory glance to the metal in her hand, she tosses it aside and reaches for the vial, draining the construct swiftly of its inner fluids. A thin, dark line of quintessence trails into the container, gleaming faintly._  
  
_The vial goes on the rack with the rest, presumably to be tested later. Still seated on the floor, she retrieves the sentry's head and cradles it in her lap, conjuring its innermost code to scroll across a screen._  
  
_"So much can be improved here," she tells him. "If we change the entire cranial structure—rework it and recode the system entirely—we can achieve an unprecedented level of logistical reasoning while still maintaining total control. It must be written into the very quintessence, but it can be done."_  
  
_"That is possible?" he asks. "With your magic?"_  
  
_She raises her head now, looks at him as though it was obvious. "Yes."_ )

 

* * *

   
  
**v.**

  
—and at the intersection, for the barest moment, he pauses. The open space takes the shape of a pentagon, five-pointed and five-sided, five hallways coming together to meet in what is by far the oddest pattern of ship design he ever encountered.  
  
She insisted on it.  
  
_The number five has power,_ she told him, and he believes her.  
  
(He believes her.)  
  
Her intersections have five paths, and they contain at their centers her circles of magic. Each one has a purpose. He knows not what this one is for, but he gives the intricacies of the design a wide berth ( _and a pensive look_ ).  
  
Rarely does he venture so deep into the druids' domain. There is no need; his quintessence infusions occur at a point designed for its easy access, and as far in as he wanders now, all he will find are the more obscure labs and holdings, sites of that which he rarely needs to concern himself with.  
  
But this is where she is, and he is looking for _her—_

 

* * *

   
  
**vi.**

  
( _She redefines the system._ The old ways were flawed, _she tells him._ This is the true power of quintessence. _She gives him the reports, shows him the new limits of magic and technology. He understands it—in the theoretical only, but that must be enough._  
  
_"What can you change with this?" he asks._  
  
"Everything."  
  
_And she does._  
  
_It is in the sentries. The ships. The weapons. It is in the generator systems on a dozen new homeworlds, in the factories that manufacture an empire one metal casing at a time._  
  
_It is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. It is_ everything.  
  
_It is_ her.  
  
_It is the blood in the veins of the Empire._ )

 

* * *

   
  
**vii.**

  
—and at a lone workstation, deep in the shadows beyond the halls, he finds her. She perches high on a stool, her attention unwavering, and he cannot see what lies before her, only that she moves a hand over it with definitive purpose. Her head is tilted beneath her hood, a familiar sign of deep contemplation, and she breaks only to turn and tap a series of notes into a console.  
  
He watches her but does not realize he does until several doboshes go by.  
  
He will blame it on the atmosphere, on the absence of light, the glow of the quintessence and the night cycle's muted mood. She does not detect his presence, or if she does, she is inclined to let him linger. He has no wish to hide from her... but he _cannot_ hide from her.  
  
( _She explained it before, that the quintessence in his veins is potent enough to sense from anywhere on the ship. Odd, if he thinks on it—but he does not._ )  
  
He commands himself to step forward—

 

* * *

   
  
**viii.**

  
( _She corrals him for a blood sample, because that is what she does, and he acquiesces, because that is what_ he _does. He does not begrudge her this, not when her only goal in these studies is to keep him alive._  
  
_The process of his quintessence infusions was perfected long ago—but, in her words, it never_ remains _perfected for long._  
  
_He does not flinch as she draws the blood from his arm. In truth, he scarcely feels it, but he does watch in the way one would watch an odd-but-innocent creature alighting on a limb. In the dark of her labs, the blood takes on an eerie hue, a solid, muted gold but for the violet glow._  
  
_Every part of him is permeated with quintessence—_ (so much more than is natural, he knows) _—and though this has long been fact, such a clear reminder proves almost strange. The quintessence wove itself_ (she wove it) _into every part of him, into skin and bone and blood, and here, limned in faint violet, the blood shows it._  
  
_Without a word, she caps the vial, discards the needle, and disappears without a sound to figure out how to keep him alive for another century._ )

 

* * *

   
  
**iv.**

  
—and when he steps from the shadows, or near enough to be seen, she stops, lifts her head, and he realizes his watching _had_ escaped her notice entirely. Whatever occupied her attention, it occupied it completely—no room left for outside distraction.  
  
She twists around and blinks, her eyes glowing bright in the relative darkness. "Sire."  
  
He angles his head a mere fraction, an unsubtle attempt at glimpsing what lies on the worktable—but he need not hide his interest. What captivated her so?  
  
"What do you study?" he asks. Rarely is she possible to catch unawares.  
  
She rotates in her chair, easily despite the fact that her feet do not reach the floor, and as she stands his gaze falls to what hid behind her: A container of quintessence, small and innocently glowing.  
  
"Merely a unimportant experiment," she says. "The testing of a hypothesis that did not require it until now." She sounds as though she truly believes it, that any project of hers is so meaningless as to warrant dismissal.  
  
"Tell me," he says, and it is a question despite itself, an entreaty.  
  
She returns to the table, but in the small movements he long ago learned to read, she beckons him forward. He goes, ears angling to listen as she begins an explanation of the quintessence's properties.  
  
In a pause, meaning to demonstrate, she reaches out a hand and calls upon the quintessence. It reacts, just as she said it would, and flares bright enough to pierce the dark.  
  
Her eyes gleam as she explains, shining as they only ever do when she speaks of her work, when he is the one listening ( _because, she told him, no other manages to understand it_ ).  
  
She rarely grants another the privilege, disinclined to trust a stranger with even the most innocent of hypotheses, but with him, she trusts beyond all limits. She moves the machine of his empire down rails of opportunity and progress, weaves quintessence into a map of the universe, and she does it for him ( _for her_ ). This is their bond, or a facet of it—the cunning, indomitable high priestess and her steady, steadfast emperor, matched beings of power.  
  
In this dark chamber, late at night, he listens to the flow of her descriptions, ideas held near-tangible in the air between them. This is familiar, a habit ( _a pleasure_ ), and he returns to it ( _to her_ ) time and again because she is his friend, his companion, and just as quintessence ties the Empire together, so too does it link them—

 

* * *

   
  
**x.**

  
( _This is the lifeblood of the Empire._ )

**Author's Note:**

> METAPHORS FOR DAAAYS (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


End file.
